Resident Evil 7: Biohazard on the Nintendo Switch is a bit of a curious case. For starters, it isn’t available outside of the Japanese e-shop, nor does it have a physical edition. Gamers hoping to embark on the horrific journey also have to stream the game to their consoles and only have the option to rent it for 180 days rather than purchasing it outright. On top of all that, it seems the game may not even save progress permanently.

The news comes via Capcom’s official page for the Switch version of the first-person survival horror title, in which Capcom makes “no promises” that saved data will actually be kept on their servers past the 180 days players pay to rent it, or even within that time period should something go wrong and corrupt the data. This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if Switch owners could keep a copy of their save stored locally, but unfortunately, the Switch doesn’t offer that option at this time.

Needless to say, save files corrupting are one of the most frustrating aspects of gaming, as it usually results in the loss of hours, or even days, of progress to the end of a game, leaving the victim with nothing but a bitter taste in their mouth. It is somewhat ironic that the only Switch game currently featuring cloud saves is having issues because of how heavily the feature has been requested for the console, which currently limits storage to the actual hardware.

Obviously, this is telling of a major issue cloud-based gaming will face as it slowly becomes more popular throughout the industry. Capcom would be wise to invest in a solution to the problem if they ever plan on releasing the Switch version to the global market. It certainly doesn't help that Resident Evil 7 save data likely won't be retained passed the 180-day rental period, giving most gamers very little reason to go back after their time is up, even if the save data isn't corrupted while playing. Hopefully, corrupted saved data won't be too prevalent on the Switch port, but only time will tell.

Resident Evil 7 has done well critically but struggled to meet sales expectations when it first launched a little over a year ago. Since then, Capcom has continued to support the title with regular DLC and new additions, all of which is included with the streamable version which Capcom announced last week.

Resident Evil 7 is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: Capcom